Android sees healthy growth at expense of Apple, RIM, MS

Android's share of smartphone subscribers in the US grew at a much larger rate …

Android's share of the smartphone OS market went up between February and May of this year while everyone else took a hit, according to the latest data from comScore. The analytics firm released its three-month MobiLens report Thursday, observing that Android's share of smartphone subscribers had gone up a full four percentage points in the US, though it still remains fourth on the list after RIM, Apple, and Microsoft.

According to comScore, all the major smartphone OS makers experienced a dip in market share among smartphone subscribers during the three-month period except for Android. Microsoft saw the largest drop of 1.9 percent, while Apple was down 1 percent and Palm saw a 0.6 drop. RIM saw the smallest fluctuation, with only a 0.4 percent dip.

Still, RIM kept its top spot with 41.7 percent of the overall market as of May 2010, followed by Apple at 24.4 percent and Microsoft at 13.2 percent. Google/Android stood at a solid 13 percent in May thanks to its four percentage point increase, and could very well overtake Microsoft by the time comScore releases its next MobiLens report.

comScore was careful to note that this data came from just before the iPhone 4 launch (which happened in late June), so there's some possibility that Apple's share will see an uptick before the next report. Keep in mind, too, that there was a high-profile leak about the new iPhone in mid-April, which many believe to have depressed iPhone 3GS and 3G sales as users awaited the new model.

Still, it's hardly surprising to see Android make such a big jump early this year. Android mindshare is way up, and the open source nature of the OS means that there's a new Android phone born every minute. With so many phones on the market targeting so many different types of users, the strategy is quite different than that of RIM, Apple, Microsoft, and Palm.

Finally, comScore points out that everyone is sharing the wealth when it comes to smartphone growth: "Despite losing share to Google Android, most smartphone platforms continue to gain subscribers as the smartphone market overall continues to grow," wrote comScore.